1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method, an information processing apparatus, and a program for assisting the development of an application program. In particular, the present invention relates to a method, an information processing apparatus, and a program for detecting a consistency in the design of screen transition of a Web application program.
2. Background Art
Methods for assisting the development of application programs have been known. For Web applications, systems using ServerSide Java (registered trademark) techniques are becoming common; especially, system development using Servlets is becoming mainstream. A Servlet is an application program that runs on a server, processes on the server a request sent from a client (Web browser), and returns the result of the processing to the client.
In a system using a typical Servlet, the Servlet is activated in response to a request sent from a Web browser, and a database is accessed from the server, or data is processed using the result of such access. Also, the Servlet takes a branch for processing or calls another Servlet in response to a request from the Web browser and returns the result to the Web browser.
JSP (Java Server Pages) may be used instead of a Servlet. JSP is pages that are implemented in Java® and displayed on a screen. For example, this technology can be used to write a Java® code in an HTML (HyperText Markup Language) file to dynamically generate pages. JSP can be used in combination with a Servlet.
Servlets and JSP exchange data mainly through application objects (for example, Beans) stored in the server (hereinafter referred to as “server objects”). The developers of such Web application programs must give consideration to complex screen transitions (the transition relations between pages) and dependencies between server objects required by the programs. Accordingly, such Web applications are prone to errors by the developers.
One known method for assisting development of a Web application using Servlets and JSP pages is to create Servlets, JSP, and Beans as components and define the correspondence between the components to automatically generate the codes (for example a technique described in Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application No. 2001-344105). This method assists the developer by clearly indicating the correspondence between components and automatically generating their corresponding codes.
However, the method disclosed in Patent Document 1 cannot detect errors in a Web application that may appear when the application is actually run. That is, although the method assists the developer in designing and creating a Web application, it does not enable the developer to identify errors that may occur at actual runtime of the Web application in advance.
If a Web application having inconsistencies in its internal design is implemented, bugs whose sources are difficult to identify may occur after the implemented components are combined, which necessitates the developer to reexamine the internal design of the application. In many cases, components of a Web application are implemented by many developers after the internal design of the Web application is completed. The internal design includes information about the design of the components such as screen transitions, screens (JSP), and server logics (Servlets). Different components are developed by different developers and inconsistencies between the components are often left undetected. Therefore, before the application is implemented, the application must be carefully checked to see that the internal design does not contain inconsistencies. However, it is not easy to detect inconsistencies because complicated screen transitions and data dependencies must be taken into consideration.
Thus, a need exists to provide a method, an information processing apparatus, and a program for effectively detect inconsistencies in a Web application program before the application program is implemented.